Category: Hiring

Have you experienced a situation where stakeholders disagreed on candidates for a position? Or have you hired a person who quit the job prematurely? Perhaps the reason was that there was no alignment among stakeholders regarding the requirements of the job.

The PI Job Assessment (PI JA) is a pivotal part of the job analysis. The JA helps you clarify what behaviour and cognitive ability needed in order to be successful in the job, and this benchmark can complement what bother criteria you might have. Before you start interviewing candidates, you need to ask yourself:

• What does the job really entail?
• Which skills are needed?
• What type of person would shine in such a job?
• How does this behaviour match the goals and the strategy of the organisation?
• How complex is the job?

The intention is to be as objective as possible in the recruitment process. Gut feeling might be a good thing, but if you rely too much on that you might become too subjective in your approach. We recommend that any recruitment process begins with a JA and furthermore that you get input from more than one person. Apart from the hiring manager there might be other stakeholders relevant to include, for example the person previously performing the role, someone from HR, a colleague who is going to work very closely with the new hire etc. It takes only about 10 minutes to fill in the questionnaire, and when results are in, you make a list of the things everyone agrees on, as well as a list of things stakeholders do not agree on. Based on this you facilitate a discussion in order to reach alignment among the stakeholders.

This step is very important. When there are differences in the input, it means that different stakeholders have different ideas about the job requirements. By involving the relevant people, you get as much information as possible about the job, and when you have reached agreement, you finalise the job target or benchmark and can generate a report describing the job. Your next step is to write a compelling job ad which attracts the candidates you wish to appeal to, so it might be a good idea to use some of the words and phrases in the job report. If you’re looking to hire a payroll assistant, you might want use words like ‘analytical’, ‘methodical’ and ‘very structured’, rather than the ‘outgoing, flexible team player described in many job ads. In other words: Get to know the job before you get to know the candidates. This is the recipe for a successful recruitment process!

To learn more about the PI Job Assessment, click HERE or feel free to contact us.